Influencers are the new celebrity endorsements. In fact, data from influencer marketing platform MuseFind shows that 92% of consumers trust an influencer more than an advertisement or traditional celebrity endorsement. With 47% of customers using Adblock technology, traditional digital advertising channels often have limited effectiveness. According to Bloomberg, $255 million is spent on influencer marketing every month. To learn more about how brands and platforms work with influencers, we spoke with Jennifer Li, CEO of MuseFind, and Tom Glazer, President of GiGi New York, a New York City based handbag company.

Source: MuseFind

As influencers have taken on a more prominent role in the marketing strategies of brands, several companies have figured out how to get in on the action by creating platforms to foster partnerships between brands and influencers and track the success of the resulting campaigns. MuseFind is one such company. Its mission is “to help brands re-romance their customers through social media influencers,” said Jennifer Li, CEO of MuseFind.

“We provide a platform to allow brands to find the most relevant influencer, to broadcast and orchestrate them at scale and to provide a way to be able to know how influencers are performing and how it affects the bottom line,” Li explained. MuseFind has worked on influencer marketing campaigns for brands such as Shiseido, Oreo, Soylent and John Varvatos. Other notable analytics platforms for brands and influencers include Captiv8, TapInfluence, TRIBE, Traackr, Klout, ShopStyle, rewardStyle (creator of LikeToKnowIt) and the recently launched Snapalytics.

Source: rewardStyle.com

The distinction between influencer and brand is becoming increasingly less clear; influencers—like Michelle Phan and Zoella—are launching their own product lines, and brands are relying more on influencers for credibility among consumers. It is a two-way street—a symbiotic relationship between brand and influencer, as they help each other grow and refine their branding. But all of it ultimately hinges on the relationship between the influencer and the consumer: “Influencer marketing is based on the economy of trust. What that means is, as a follower, I can just as easily unfollow an influencer as I can follow them. So I could say, ‘I’m not going to follow this influencer anymore because I feel like she’s advertising too much or she’s not authentic or she’s not working with brands that are really high quality.’ On the positive side, that means the brands that do get to work with influencers create much higher purchase intent with their customers,” explained Li.

The power of influencers does not necessarily lie in their follower count, but in their ability to actually influence through authenticity and curation. “Traackr cautions that bigger is not always better, and that influencers should be selected for their relevance to the brand, not their follower count. For luxury brands whose products are not affordable to large swaths of their own social following, picking the right persona to uphold the brand image is more important,” explains Sarah Jones at Luxury Daily.

Also On FORBES:

There is a shift to focus on quality rather than quantity when dealing with social influencers. “More and more, brands are turning to people with far less numbers of followers—sometimes even as low as 8,000—to help share their messages. In return, a brand receives intangible benefits like authenticity, a unique point of view, deeper storytelling and the potential of reaching a more tailored audience,” writes Rebecca Suhrawardi, fashion journalist and fellow FORBES contributor.

GiGi New York has experienced success partnering with micro-influencers. Influencers with large followings often have an audience who is following many other bloggers, “Whereas some of the smaller bloggers, their followers might only follow them and one or two others, so they end up being much more engaged,” explained the marketing team at GiGi New York. “There have been some very large bloggers, who we would have expected some huge results from, that we were underwhelmed by; their sales and their traffic were not what we would have expected.”

GiGi New York’s close relationships with influencers stem from good timing—getting in on the ground floor of influencer marketing. “There are real benefits from befriending these girls and we have been particularly fortunate because our relationships were formed before either of us had the commercial success we have today,” explained Tom Glazer. The handbag company focuses on producing valuable content for their customers, focusing on distinguishing itself from other brands like Coach and J. Crew.

The company wants to provide their customers with something new, something that is unique to GiGi New York shoppers for a little while. “We often see girls turning towards influencers as their personal stylists. They are able stay up on the trends, without constantly looking at fashion magazines.” Influencers are in a unique position to keep consumers updated on trends and connect with smaller audiences based on personal style.

Brands need to leverage the power of influencers for more than just marketing; they can be a powerful feedback tool for brands to understand their customer. “We encourage our brands to not just see influencers as billboards, because that’s not what they are. They have so many other capabilities; a lot of them are really business savvy and business minded,” says Li. “I would say over the next two to five years, we will see influencers become their own micro-brand representing other companies; so influencers and brands will start to blur the lines themselves to the point where you won’t know if that is an influencer or a brand, or if that influencer is a brand.”

We see influencers increasingly taking on a more significant role in marketing as they continue to grow and refine their audience. As the strategy grows, micro-influencers will likely be more successful—with higher conversion rates—as they better maintain their authenticity, avoiding the celebrity status that is beginning to accompany well-known influencers. Brands and retailers will need to continue to find new “authentic” and stealthy marketing channels, as consumers increasingly reject traditional marketing and increasingly turn to social media as their resource for all types of information, including trends, products and reviews.

I am an award-winning global retail analyst and a specialist in retail innovation and technology. I am the CEO and founder of Coresight Research, a think tank and mentorship network that advises clients on disruptive technologies reshaping today’s global retail landscape. I ...